News Contributor Cassandra Fong reports on the success of Anora at the Oscars

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Anora swept the Oscars, winning five awards in one night following the LA wildfires; the independent film broke multiple records, from the first Generation Z winner of an Oscar, Mikey Madison, to the first director to win multiple Oscars in one year for a single film, Sean Baker (and no, Walt Disney and Bong Joon-ho do not count).

 

Undoubtedly, it was a cinematic tour de force. This subversive and profane Cinderella allegory of a young, beautiful, and foul-mouthed stripper in Brooklyn marrying the shiftless heir of a powerful and wealthy Russian oligarch after a whirlwind week of pretending to be his girlfriend is an unsentimental eye-roll to Pretty Woman. What happens when the romance was built on sand and the fairytale wedding has left you with a nasty hangover? He wants a green card, she wants financial security, and neither of them gets what they want in the end, thanks to the wealthy parents in question.

 

A contentious critic’s darling, then. It has controversially split reactions across sex workers. This movie is either progressive for refusing to condemn the oldest profession as a social transgression or regressive for depicting them as downtrodden and vulnerable. A lack of the nominal heroine’s backstory or scenes that don’t revolve around her job did not help. Is she being defined by others’ perception of her and actually becoming increasingly clear-eyed about her relationship to money, men and power? God knows. A few claims online about it being Russian propaganda (a supporting actor portraying a secretly soft-hearted henchman has been accused of links to state propaganda) and Russia’s warm response to the film has caused further backlash, though evidently not enough to stop it winning five out of its six Oscar nominations.

 

And of course, Madison’s award for Best Actress was a shocking result. She stood on the stage with her award, thanking her fellow nominees for their performances. Demi Moore, for her thrilling role as an aging actress in The Substance, had been widely predicted to win and had had a glittering streak of wins on the awards circuit. And she’d played the campaign game well—glamorous appearances, thoughtful interviews, the whole nine yards. Both movies extensively and provocatively explored female objectification and sexuality, but one was a comedy-drama and the other was a horror. Madison, though, took the award home from her larger role that gave her much more to do.

 

Or maybe we can focus on how Madison stunned on the red carpet in a baby-pink Dior gown. But the fact that an indie film about a stripper getting screwed over by oligarchs is dominating both the Oscars and the internet? That’s something. That’s culture.


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